Study finds deer breeding consistent in Texas

MCT NEWS WIRE

Saturday

Nov 26, 2011 at 3:35 PM

DALLAS — I made a classic error in judgment when I packed for a deer hunt east of Abilene on the last weekend in October. This ranch has managed lands deer permits. Rifle hunting is legal with MLDPs as early as Oct. 1.

When I was going through my gear, I actually had my rattling horns in hand and put them back down. Nah, I thought, it’s not even Halloween yet. The rut (breeding activity) in that area peaks about Thanksgiving, or so I’d observed in past seasons.

On the ranch the next day, at one of the first places I got out of my car to glass a distant food plot, I saw a mature buck chasing a doe in the draw below me.

The next morning, I saw a parade of bucks — six that I counted — in a breeding chase. It was a still, perfectly clear morning, ideal for rattling. The leading edge of the whitetail rut is an excellent time to attract a mature buck to a simulated buck fight. And I was totally unprepared, all because I’d made a common mistake about the whitetail breeding chronology.

Why is the rut important to deer hunters? Because it’s the only time mature bucks that are nocturnal for most of the hunting season will throw caution to the wind, standing in a ranch road with a doe at high noon, staring down a truck full of armed hunters.

There are many misconceptions about the timing of the whitetail rut in Texas. The Texas rut varies so much that does in some areas are bred as early as August, in other areas, as late as February. A three-year Texas Parks and Wildlife Department study dispels some of the myths.

The study examined fetuses in 2,436 does in 16 study areas that included all eight ecological regions. Basically, what they found is that some breeding occurred throughout the hunting season in most regions but the breeding peak was consistent

The study also concluded that hunter movement, rather than deer movement, formed hunters’ perception of the rut. Hunters were more likely to be afield during cool weather, thus observing and attributing rut activity to the weather.

Deer breed regardless of the weather. If they needed cold weather, there wouldn’t be any deer in South Texas, where I once encountered 100-degree January temperatures on the final weekend of deer season.

And what about the drought’s effect on deer health? Will does struggling to survive breed at all? Maybe not, said Alan Cain, white-tailed deer program leader for TPWD, but unbred does are always rare. He expects the visible rut to progress normally, if there is such a thing as normal.

One March, I was fishing at Choke Canyon Lake south of San Antonio. The state park where we launched has a lot of deer.

As we headed for the ramp just after daylight, I spotted three deer moving in a manner that was unmistakably a breeding chase. One of the deer was a very young doe. The other was a young buck. The third was a mature buck that had already shed his antlers. That’s the definition of late breeding.

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